I recently moved to my new home in Giverny, which marks the end of what I’m now calling my Vagabond Decade.

Since 2008, when I sold my house in Pasadena, California, I’ve embraced a peripetetic life. In that time, I’ve pitched my tent in more than a few places:  Florence, Italy (at three different addresses). Edinburgh, Scotland. And now, Giverny, France.

For the past decade, I’ve paid for storage units in Pasadena, which nearly broke the bank. Although I sold or gave away more than half of what I owned as I emptied the house, there were some things I just couldn’t part with.

Earlier this year, I made a Big Life Decision: I decided to pack up my things in storage and move to France. I’m no stranger to leaps of faith. I have all my papers in order. I have Skype, WhatsApp, email and a variety of devices to stay in touch with those dear and far.

But this leap would be different. I wanted more than a landing spot. I wanted to make a HOME somewhere.

For much of the past 10 years, I’ve lived in places decorated and furnished with other people’s belongings. I’ve missed MY things: my books, photos, artwork, quilts, dishes, and family heirlooms. And so, this winter, I went back to Pasadena and spent six weeks sifting through what I’ve kept in storage — and learned something about myself.

As I contemplated what would go in the shipping container, I had a nagging thought: WHAT IF the ship sinks or the container slides off the deck? I had heard stories about accidents at sea. A new layer of craziness set in: I started making a pile of what I would take on the plane in my checked luggage — and a tiny pile of what I would put in my carry-on.

My carry-on items came down to this: A Civil War diary that I found in a box of family papers. Photos of my grandfather as a soldier in France during World War I, along with the war letters he wrote to his future wife (my grandmother) and to his mother, who lived in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. A little box of my mother’s favorite jewelry. Photos from my son’s childhood and mine — I’ve really missed not having family photos with me these past 10 years. A rock my son painted for me as a Cub Scout. A little Lalique dish my favorite editor at People magazine gave me as a wedding gift. A clay Scottish piper I bought during my student days at the University of Edinburgh. A cobalt-blue vase that my mother’s mother kept at her dining room window and a journal of her poems that she wrote out for me by hand. A lovely paperweight that my father’s mother kept on her desk. A small pewter oil lamp my father bought for me on a business trip to Antwerp, Belgium. A Christmas photo ornament of my son as a baby.

My most precious things were touchstones of people and places I’ve loved, and they all fit in a carry-on.

In the past 10 years, I’ve purged and sold three houses (two belonged to my parents) that were filled to the rafters with the stuff of our lives. I regret parting with some of it. But I held on to the heart and soul of me — and learned, in the process, that what we keep says a lot about who we are.

The first badge I earned as a Girl Scout was Storyteller — a portent of things to come, indeed. My second badge was Cook — definitely NOT a portent. My campfire meals were a total disaster. (But everyone in my troop will tell you I made killer S’mores.)

So it is with a big smile that I add this to my writing resume — RECIPE BOOK AUTHOR. Regardez: A Garden of Recipes from the Restaurants of Giverny.

Although I’m not a cook, I enjoyed working with Giverny’s chefs who shared with me their interpretations of Normandy cooking — from traditional recipes to haute-cuisine variations, all of which feature regionally sourced products and more than a little Calvados (Normandy’s famous apple brandy). There’s even a fish recipe from Claude Monet’s household cooking journal. He wasn’t a cook either — so I’m in good company.

How all this transpired is a story for another book that I’ll write someday about my life in Giverny (actually, it’s already in progress). But I must say, despite the challenges I’ve faced in the kitchen over the years, I was the perfect editor for this project. I asked all the stupid questions so that novice home cooks wouldn’t be befuddled. I must admit that when one chef told me, “Put this in the salamander,” I looked around expecting to see a lizard-y creature slinking across the kitchen floor.

I wrote the recipes in conversational English (in complete sentences, heaven forfend!) so that cooks everywhere who have minimal English — or perhaps have phone apps that can translate text for them — don’t miss an article. Why do cookbook writers delete the word “the,” I’d like to know. Whisk in olive oil to make dressing. Not only is that sentence ambiguous, but English-speakers don’t talk that way!

With my limited French (learned many years ago in high school), I managed to translate the recipes into English, which was an entertaining game of pantomime and sound effects. With one recipe, as the chef and I struggled to find the right word, BRING TO A BOIL became BRING TO A “BLUB-BLUB-BLUB.”

Measurements are in both metric and U.S. equivalents — a giant math problem that went on for weeks. I excelled in math in school, fortunately. But who knew that equivalents for salt, sugar and flour aren’t the same? (Okay, smarty pants, it was news to me.)

Like Monet, who loved a good meal, I have come to appreciate the local cuisine — though I don’t need to indulge in blood sausage or cock testicles (the image THAT conjures!) more than once. I enjoyed sampling every dish in this book — and I’d definitely make every recipe, if only I could cook.

My one contribution to the book is the photography, which I hope will provide Giverny’s visitors with a lovely souvenir — even if they, too, are clueless in the kitchen.

A Garden of Recipes from the Restaurants of Giverny is now for sale on Amazon — and by special order at bookstores everywhere. It will be in Ingram’s catalog, so ask your local bookseller to stock it. (I’ll come sign copies and we’ll hire someone to do a cooking demo.)

My physiotherapist here, who eased my tension headaches during the conversion-calculation phase of the project, suggested that I put the number for Poison Control in the back of the book. Such a cheeky guy — but I hand-wrote that number, along with the number for the local ambulance service, in the copy I signed for him.

I really do deserve a modicum of respect in the culinary world. I’m a woman who still makes Killer S’mores, after all. And then there are my TO-DIE-FOR margaritas!

I hope you enjoy this little garden of Giverny recipes. I wish you bon appétit— and bon courage!

Amazon link

I’ve written a new novel entitled By Chance that tells the story of a divorced, middle-aged woman who regrets that true and lasting love has eluded her. But as she reconsiders her past choices and missed opportunities, she is surprised by a discovery that changes the way she looks at her life.

For a long time now, I’ve had the same regret. (Funny how authors relate so well to their protagonists! ) My unfulfilled wish in this lifetime is that I didn’t fall in love in my youth with a man I’d grow to love even more as we aged together.

My 12-year marriage ended in divorce when I was in my mid-40s. After that, I was a single mother for 10 years. I have a wonderful son, who has been the light of my life since his birth in 1989. I had so hoped when he was born that we’d be a happy family making wonderful memories for many, many years to come. But that didn’t happen.

When my son went off to college 10 years ago, I had to re-invent my life. Alone. I sold my house — escrow closed on September 11, 2008, five days before Lehman Brothers failed, triggering the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression. I sat on a plane flying to Rome two days later, reading the dire newspaper headlines in Italian. When I filled out the embarkation card on that flight, I didn’t know what to write on the line that asked for my home address. I had no home. But I secretly felt relieved. I had sold my house in the nick of time, and with that came great freedom.

In the past 10 years, I’ve moved my tent a bit — three times to Florence, Italy; once to Edinburgh, Scotland; and most recently to Giverny, France. Between some of those moves, I’ve returned to home base in Pasadena, California, where I enjoy spending time with my son, hanging out with friends, and soaking up the southern California sunshine.

One friend recently told me she thought I was “crazy” to choose this vagabond life. True, I don’t have the trappings and comforts of American living — a big house, cars in the garage, a kitchen with outsized appliances. But I feel unencumbered. I’ve learned to travel light and make all the small spaces where I’ve lived HOME. There’s a valuable lesson in that.

Many friends envy my life. I hear all the time, You’re living the dream. It’s not the fairytale that it might seem (living as a foreigner in distant lands isn’t easy), but it is sometimes dream-like. My roamings have taken me to incredible places. In my new life in Giverny, I feel immersed in beauty at every turn. I understand why Claude Monet spent the last half of his life here and often feel like I’m in one of his paintings. There are moments when I think that if I touched the petals of the flowers, paint would come off on my fingers.

What brought me to Giverny was LOVE. Not only my love of this place, but the love of a man whom I adore. We met a few years ago, during one of my visits here. And last fall, our friendship took a romantic turn. A story for another day — or book!

I’ve been single for 20 years. I’ve had a number of relationships since my divorce, including several travel romances along the way, but nothing lasted. Until now. In my far-flung wanderings, I’ve longed to turn to someone I love and say, Isn’t this wonderful? I now have that someone.

I’ve come to realize a few things about love. It takes many forms — not all of them wonderful. Love can tear your heart apart. It can drive you to jealousy and suspicion. It can make you possessive and demanding. It can cause you to say and do hurtful things. Over time, the pain of all this can close off your heart altogether.

The lesson I’ve personally learned about love: In its best form, love brings out the best in me and my partner. It brings side-splitting laughter, profound tenderness, a happy tear that springs from the corner of the eye, a flip of my heart when I hear him come through the door.

When I started writing By Chance, I was still wondering if I’d ever find true love again. Much of the story is fiction, but some of it is as true as I remember it. And those memories are still so clear, after all these years. If you recognize yourself in this story (I’ve changed names and personal details), please know that you’re part of an important realization that comes to the lovelorn protagonist at the end of the book. She and I are grateful to you.

The couple pictured on the book’s cover are my parents on their wedding day: My dad’s first act of gallantry as a married man was catching my mom as she stumbled on the stairs. The name of the photographer has vanished with time. But I’m thankful to him or her for capturing this moment of their first steps together as a married couple. Love can be fraught with missteps, but my parents’ journey together lasted 63 years and inspired much of this book.

I’ve dedicated this novel to “those longing for love, with the hope that, just by chance, the wonder and mystery of it will find you — and delight you — when you least expect it.”

For centuries, poets and lyricists have waxed rhapsodic about LOVE. It changes everything, makes the world go round. It’s like a red, red rose, thorns and all.

As I enjoy new-found love, this Shakespeare sonnet speaks to my heart:

Of all my loves this is the first and last
That in the autumn of my years has grown,
A secret fern, a violet in the grass,
A final leaf where all the rest are gone.
Would that I could give all and more, my life,
My world, my thoughts, my arms, my breath, my future,
My love eternal, endless, infinite, yet brief,
As all loves are and hopes, though they endure.
You are my sun and stars, my night, my day,
My seasons, summer, winter, my sweet spring,
My autumn song, the church in which I pray,
My land and ocean, all that the earth can bring
Of glory and of sustenance, all that might be divine,
My alpha and my omega, and all that was ever mine.

For many years, during my life in Pasadena, California, I was part of a quilting group. The ladies in that group were my sisters, my aunts, my closest friends and my pillars of strength when life presented challenges. My son, Colin, was beloved by them. Before he was born, the ladies secretly made him a quilt. They each made a block or two in a pinwheel pattern with fabric from their scrap bags. They’d bring the blocks they were working on to the meeting each week and would wait until I excused myself — as a pregnant woman, my trips to the loo were frequent — and would quickly pull out their blocks to assess the quilt-in-progress.

Colin loved that quilt. He slept with it every night until he went to college. By then, it was nearly in tatters. I repaired it often. One night, when he was about 6, I tried to mend it after he went to bed. But he couldn’t get to sleep without it. He called out from his room, “Mom, can I just hold it until I fall asleep?”

In its fragile state, that quilt sits in my Pasadena storage unit, well-protected in a zipped bag. The blocks bear the timeworn signatures of each of the Quilting Ladies, as Colin fondly called them.

This week, I officially became a member of “Deux Mille et Une Croix,” a group of women who do cross-stitch embroidery in a community room around the corner from the village church in Vernonnet (just down the road from Giverny). Their name means “2001 Crosses” because they formed their group in 2001.

I met two of the members a few weeks ago at a fair in Giverny, where embroidered linens, fabrics and notions were on sale. I filled a bag and admired their beautiful work. Behold Monet’s house rendered as cross stitches on linen…

I attended my first meeting of the Cross-Stitch Ladies a couple of weeks ago and immediately felt at home. A lovely woman named Michele who speaks English took me under wing. Her son lives in L.A. and she has visited Pasadena many times. What’s the chance of THAT?!!!!

The group meets every Tuesday from 2 to 9 p.m. so that women can come and go as their schedules allow. The room accommodates two long tables — one where the ladies work on their projects and the other where tea and biscuits are served at 4. The room has a library of embroidery books that members can check out. I’d like to learn more about silk-ribbon embroidery. A French woman in the group has offered to teach me.

At this week’s meeting, I met a woman from Cornwall, England, named Anna, who has lived in France for many years. I liked her instantly. She reminds me so much of one of the Quilting Ladies (that would be you, Jo). She showed me her not-so-secret Santa project: she’s embroidering squares that will become a cushion cover, with colorful cross-stitched figures of women from around the world. The Secret Santa gifts are to be embroidered with a proverb or saying. Anna has chosen Martin Luther King’s immortal words: I HAVE A DREAM.

The group has special craft workshops and field trips each month. I’ve signed up for a class on how to make lampshades and a field trip to Paris (by train) to see the Yves Saint Laurent museum next month. Should be fun.

Now that I’m a card-carrying member of the 2001 Crosses, I need a project. At the fair in Giverny, I had seen a tapestry canvas, stretched on a frame, for sale. The design was a basket of flowers. Someone had already stitched the basket and a few of the flowers with wool yarn, but much of it is unfinished.

It didn’t sell at the fair and was sitting in a box when I came to the first meeting. Michele asked if I’d like to work on it. Pourquoi pas? Why not? I said. I liked the idea of finishing another woman’s work.

I said to Anna, “In America, quilters call unfinished projects UFOs…”

Before I could explain what that meant, she finished my sentence. “Unfinished Objects,” she said.

That made me laugh. It seems to be a global phenomenon among women who stitch.

At the fair, there had been a box of felt patches in the shape of flower petals. The vendor thought they might have been epaulets for military costumes. Another woman thought they had been intended as flower petals for an abbey prayer rug.

We really should leave notes with our UFOs, I thought.

The UFO tapestry canvas is now mine. I asked if anyone knew the original owner.

“She’s dead,” one woman said.

“Does anyone know her name?” I asked.

After some discussion, someone remembered:  Madame Souliman.

Half the yarn is missing from the original kit, so I will be calling on Madame Souliman’s spirit to help me plan the colors.

I hope she’s happily looking down on her UFO. I will do my very best to make it as lovely as she had intended.

Yesterday, Jean-Pierre and I stood marveling at the yucca plant in our little garden. Almost overnight, two new flower shoots had appeared, adding to the five spires already in bloom.

“It’s such a gift,” he said to me. We sort of felt like proud parents.

Native to the Americas, yuccas are a desert plant that I’ve known in arid southern California, where they grow wild on hillsides and gild drought-tolerant gardens. I was surprised to find them here in Giverny, which sits at the 49th Parallel — the latitude line that establishes the border between Canada and the western U.S.

With more than a little help from the warmth of the Gulf Stream, yuccas thrive in Giverny.

But when I arrived here in June, our yucca was half dead and covered with black spots. I wondered if we should prune it with a shovel.

I envisioned a flower bed next to it and imagined how lovely the yucca would be as the anchor plant. JP trimmed away its dead leaves. We tilled the ground around it, adding fresh soil, before planting the yucca’s companions — lavender, Russian sage, nepeta (catnip for the sweet kitty next door), lupines, Lady’s Mantle, alstroemeria, foxgloves, lamb’s ear, wild geraniums, herbs (including coriander for homemade guacamole), a few Tuscan irises I brought from Italy, and three of my favorite David Austin roses.

I was in heaven. As an apartment dweller for the past 10 years, I had really missed sinking my bare toes into the dirt.

To our delight, the yucca perked up. Clusters of bright green leaves appeared. The black spots slowly faded.

And then one day, as I was weeding, I saw the first flower shoot. A carnation-pink poker was peeking through the sword-shaped leaves.

We watched in amazement as two more flower stalks appeared a few days later. Now there are seven.

When I wake up every morning, the first thing I do is look out the window at our little flower bed, which has given us pleasure in equal measure to the care we’ve given it.

The yucca’s blooms are truly a gift — and a reminder of what can happen when we treat nature with kindness. I’m most grateful that, even at the 49th Parallel, I have a beautiful front-yard reminder of home.

I’ve given this blog a long rest, but I’m feeling inspired to share some TALES FROM GIVERNY, my new home…

Giverny is a village of 500 residents that sits on a bend of the Seine across from the town of Vernon, 45 minutes west of Paris by train. Giverny is where Impressionist painter Claude Monet lived the last half of his life and where streams of tourists come daily, from April till November, to enjoy the stunning beauty of the gardens he created and immortalized in many of his paintings.

I love photographing the gardens and often wish I could depict on canvas what I see through the camera lens. Sometimes I feel like a painter as I compose a shot, trying to capture the essence of Monet’s vision. I squint at the landscape, seeing the interplay of light and color that inspired not only Monet’s work but a painting movement that marked the beginning of modern art.

The unique light of the Seine Valley was what captivated Impressionists. The air has a vapory quality, tinged with morning mist and evening fog. The Impressionists were “plein-air” painters — they painted in the “open air,” adapting to changing light and weather conditions. Giverny experiences ever-changing weather, as fronts move across Normandy from the Atlantic to the west and the English Channel to the north. One day, in the span of an afternoon, I photographed Monet’s lily pond under brilliant sunshine, stormy skies, a lovely rain and then dewy twilight.

A few years ago, I tagged along with a painting group organized by American artist Caroline Homes Nuckolls and her photographer husband, Rich, the founders of Art Colony Giverny, whose week-long sessions in spring and fall give artists an opportunity to paint in the gardens and on location elsewhere in the area. I hadn’t painted since I was in first grade and loved learning how to mix paint and how to properly hold a brush. Caroline sent me home with several tubes of paint, but they sat in a drawer…until last week.

I asked Giverny artist Christian Avril if he would give me a painting lesson in the gardens. Chris is much beloved here, a French plein-air artist who can be seen around the village at his easel, in his colorful “artiste” attire. Here he is, arriving for my lesson at our rendezvous point in front of Monet’s house…

It’s possible to purchase a “Billet Artiste” — an artist’s ticket — that gives painters and photographers access to the gardens after hours, from 6-8 p.m. The cost is €9.50 (about $11), the same price as admission during the day. After 6, the gardens go quiet as the guards usher out the last of the daytime visitors. You’re then free to set up your easel or tripod and immerse yourself in the golden hours of evening.

As I followed Chris to the lily pond, I asked him where he got his vintage wicker painter’s trolley. “On the internet,” he said. I loved the irony of that.

My painting kit was cobbled together from odds and ends in the storage space next to where I now live. I felt emboldened carrying an easel that had belonged to the late Gale Bennett, who for many years was Giverny’s well-known American-artist-in-residence and whose studio had been on the other side of what is now my living room wall.

Chris made quick work of setting up on the little bridge at the far end of the pond. He laughed at Gale’s easel. “There’s a part missing here,” he said, jerry-rigging the top clamp.

On my painting excursions with Caroline, we had carried bottled water for our brushes. Chris’ method is more organic — he leaned over the bridge railing and swung a plastic container, at the end of a twine rope, scooping up water from the pond. I imagined little tadpoles swimming around the bristles of our brushes.

The subject of my first painting was to be Monet’s iconic Japanese bridge, cloaked in dark green wisteria vines, at the opposite end of the pond. At 6 p.m. in mid-September, the sun is low and the light fades fast. Chris asked me to outline in blue paint — a blueprint, essentially — the scene I intended to paint. He handed me a pad of paper to use as a palette and gave me a paint-mixing lesson.

“This is how you make the green of the bridge,” he said, swirling some cadmium yellow with phthalo blue.

“Okay, begin,” he said, grinning. “Good luck.”

I pretty much had no idea what I was doing. Occasionally, Chris, who was working on an immense canvas that had somehow materialized out of nowhere, would check on my progress. Looking at my tentative brush strokes, he said, “Gale Bennett would say, Don’t be bashful with your brush. Be bold.”

So I became even more emboldened. And slowly but surely, the magical alchemy of the color wheel began. I was boldly brushing cadmium yellow and Monet green on whorls of violet and magenta, creating the sun’s glow on the wisteria canopy. A daub of titanium white on a dash of pink and — voila! — a water lily was born.

It was a warm evening, with no chill in the air to warn me that the sun was setting. When Chris said, “Okay, the last thing you must do is paint the bridge,” I realized it had disappeared in the fall of night.

I conjured up my memory of it and carefully painted its outline against the foliage. The bridge is barely discernable in the finished work — true to my plein-air experience.

We quickly packed up, cleaning our brushes in the little tub of pond water. I laughed when Chris slipped his huge canvas into a nearby clump of bushes. “I’ll finish it tomorrow,” he said. I wondered if Monet had stored his works-in-progress in the bushes, too.

I loved my first lesson and went back the next night, a glorious evening that I spent photographing dahlias for a photo book of the gardens that I’ll be publishing soon. I decided my next painting would be of the Grande Allée, which leads from the entrance of the house down to the front gate. At this time of year, the nasturtiums that grow on either side of the Allée have almost completed their summer-long crawl to the middle.

I was the only artist in the gardens a few nights ago, when I painted the Grande Allée. As I drew my “blueprint” on my gessoed board, there was the sound of a vacuum cleaner and laughter in the house as staff closed up for the night. By the time I was filling in the details of the dahlias and the sunflowers an hour later, the sun was falling fast. When I put down my brush, I felt I had more to do (and so much more to learn), but I liked that the picture captures a fleeting moment — the last light of day.

I’m a rank amateur, but I’m really enjoying this painting thing. And what better place to learn, with wonderful teachers (including the spirit of Gale Bennett at my elbow) and Monet himself hovering in the ether.

During the past few months, I’ve enjoyed sharing the story of The Secret of Marie as I’ve traveled across the U.S. on a book tour that took me from southern California to the Chicago suburbs to Evansville, Wisconsin, and finally to New Jersey and New York City. It was wonderful seeing old friends and making new ones along the way. I’m deeply grateful for the kindness, enthusiastic support and hospitality shown to me by so many during my travels.

The idea for this book came to me 12 years ago, during my first stay in Giverny, France, where Claude Monet spent the last half of his life. He immortalized his now-famous Giverny flower garden and lily pond in paintings that are treasured jewels of museum collections around the world. Today, more than 500,000 visitors come to see Monet’s house and gardens each year. I’ve been among them on my many visits to Giverny, as I immersed myself in the history of this bucolic village that was a flourishing artists’ colony at the turn of the last century.

The Secret of Marie was inspired by what happened to me on that visit in 2004, when I discovered the work of American Impressionist painter Theodore Robinson, who became a close friend and correspondent of Monet’s. As I learned more about Robinson, I became intrigued with his relationship with his favorite model, known only as Marie.

Although I had read excerpts from Robinson’s diaries in the course of my research, it was a thrill to see four of his original journals at the Frick Library in New York City, during my visit there in May. He writes very little about Marie, which adds to the mystery of their relationship. It seems theirs was a tortured romance that came with a painful decision not to marry. But happily, their friendship endured. After Robinson last saw Marie in Paris, in 1892, he corresponded with her and, in fact, received a letter from her just a few months before he died in 1896, of a severe asthma attack at the tragically young age of 43.

A highlight of the book tour was my visit to Evansville, Wisconsin, where Robinson grew up. I had been in contact with local historian Ruth Ann Montgomery, whose Robinson research was considerable help to me in piecing together the timeline of his early life. She, in turn, introduced me to Kendall Schneider, also of Evansville, who is the president of the Theodore Robinson Society.

Kendall was an extraordinary host during my visit, showing me Evansville’s historic sites, including the house where Robinson lived (right) and the school he attended. We visited the local cemetery, where Robinson is buried. Next to the family tombstone is an easel, placed there by the Society’s artists’ group, which holds a plein-air painting competition every year in Robinson’s honor. In Impressionist style, the artists render their work out in the “open air,” in the countryside surrounding Evansville.

My Evansville hostess Heidi Carvin, who kindly offered me her guest room, was in the midst of planning the installation of a labyrinth at a local park, next to a former seminary where Robinson had gone to school as a boy (his father had been a Methodist minister). She was collecting donations for the labyrinth’s pavers at the time of my visit, and I was only too happy to contribute. She asked her donors for a word or phrase that people could meditate on as they walked the labyrinth. I chose SERENDIPITY.

Just my luck that Heidi is a master gardener. One of my hostess gifts to her was flower seeds from Monet’s garden to plant in her own garden. I’ve also asked her to plant some of those seeds at Theodore’s grave.

The ultimate end to this journey came serendipitously just a few weeks ago when I was in Giverny at the same time Kendall was in Paris. He and his lovely wife Debbie came to Giverny for a couple of days and stayed at Moulin des Chennevières, a featured location in the book.

There was talk during Kendall’s visit of the possibility of Giverny and Evansville becoming sister cities. How wonderful that would be — a modern-day link between Monet and Robinson, one of the few American artists in Giverny whom Monet welcomed into his inner circle. I can imagine plein-air painters from Evansville coming to Giverny, following in Robinson’s footsteps, and painters from Giverny visiting Evansville, which is beautifully situated in the rolling farmland and woodlands of southern Wisconsin.

Before I left Giverny a few weeks ago, I had the delight of an off-road, four-wheel-drive tour by Jean-Pierre Guillemard, who was born in Giverny and has lived there much of his life. His family has lived in Giverny for four generations. (His youngest brother Gérard, along with Gérard’s wife Stéphanie, own the Moulin des Chennevières.) Jean-Pierre and Gérard’s grandmother knew Monet personally — he was her next-door neighbor.

Jean-Pierre drove me on barely passable tracks through hillsides surrounding the village where Impressionist artists painted more than a century ago. He took me to the meadow of wildflowers where Robinson likely painted Marie as she read a book, in an exquisite painting called Val d’Arconville, which I recently saw at the Art Institute of Chicago. And to end the tour, Jean-Pierre showed me a patch of poppies in a wheat field near the Seine. I almost expected to see Monet with his easel there.

This has been a wonderful journey that has come full circle. I feel blessed by serendipity and the kindness of friends and strangers. I’m especially grateful to the village of Giverny, to which I’ve dedicated my book, for so graciously welcoming me during my many visits there.

I’ve often wondered what Theodore Robinson would think of all this. An American woman telling his story and speculating about his romance with Marie. But I hope he wouldn’t mind too much. I’ve pleasantly sensed his presence at many turns as I’ve worked on this book.

One of the mysteries that presented during my research was the location of the Giverny garden where Robinson photographed Marie. The first known photo of her face is revealed on the last page of the book, as she stands next to a fruit tree with a bent limb, in a garden with a high stone wall.

On a suggestion from Giverny’s mayor Claude Landais whom I met this spring, I went to the far end of the village, past the church where Monet is buried, and walked up an incline that gave me a view of a garden hidden by a high stone wall. I walked down a lane to get another view of it, standing on my tip-toes. In the corner of the garden, there’s an old gnarled fruit tree, similar in its growth habit to the tree in the photo.

I looked up at the late afternoon sky and smiled. Theo, is this the place? Give me a sign.

As I walked away, I turned around to take one last look. And suddenly the forsythia behind the garden wall caught the sunlight. It lasted just a few minutes and then the sun dropped below the clouds.

I think it was a sign.

Credit: book-signing photo — Dave Neesley

My first encounter with American Impressionist artist Theodore Robinson happened in 2004, when I was staying in Giverny, France — just down the road from Monet’s famous gardens — at a B&B that had been an 18th-century water mill.

Although Robinson (1852-1896) had been dead for more than century, he seemed very much alive to me during my stay at the old moulin. The mill and its surroundings had been the setting for a number of Robinson’s paintings when he was a prominent figure in Giverny’s artists’ colony in the late 1800s. The B&B owner told me a story about Robinson and his connection to the moulin that intrigued me. In a lovely way, I sensed Robinson’s presence there.

In the decade that followed, I often thought about Robinson and read about his life and art. Born in Vermont, he grew up in Evansville, Wisconsin, and studied art at the Chicago Academy of Design (before it became the Art Institute). He pursued his painting career in New York and eventually in Paris. During his Giverny years, he was befriended and mentored by Monet.

As I learned more about Robinson, I became intrigued with his favorite model — a Parisian woman known only as Marie. A model for other Impressionist artists as well, including Edgar Degas, Marie featured in a number of Robinson’s paintings between 1885 and 1892. Her profile is distinctive — Robinson renders her upturned nose and protruding upper lip with the attention of a man who knew her well. Except for one portrait of her sitting in a chair and holding a violin, Robinson always painted her in profile, as if shielding her from curious eyes. They were lovers and spent time together in Giverny. There was gossip about a love child.

Last spring, as I began writing the story of Theodore and Marie, I studied the three known photos Robinson had taken of her in 1892. In all three, she is in profile or with her head bent. She wears the clothes of a Normandy peasant girl — a long skirt, a pleated vest and a short-sleeved white blouse. All three photos had been taken in an unkempt garden in Giverny, with a high stone wall in the background. In one of the photos, she sits in a chair, bent over her mending, near an old gnarled tree with a branch bent like an elbow.

I had seen these photos in a catalog of an American Impressionist exhibition that traveled to San Diego in 2007. Another of Robinson’s Giverny photos, titled Woman Standing by a Tree, caught my eye in that catalog. The quality of the image was poor, but the bent branch of that tree was unmistakable.

I contacted the Chicago-based Terra Foundation for American Art, which owns a collection of Robinson’s photographs — including Woman Standing by a Tree — that had been gifted to the Foundation by New York art dealer and Robinson expert Ira Spanierman in 1985. The date range given for Woman Standing by a Tree was c. 1889-91. But the setting and the woman’s clothing and hairstyle seemed to link this photo to those of Marie, taken in 1892.

It was a thrilling moment for me, in the Terra’s vault one day last October, to see Robinson’s original photographs, knowing that his hands had been on those images.

Terra’s registrar Cathy Ricciardelli kindly let me look at Woman Standing by a Tree under magnification. I asked her to take a look as well, to confirm my hunch. There was little doubt: the anonymous woman by the tree wears the same earring and ring on her left hand worn by Marie in the photos taken in 1892.

Suddenly from a stack of photos that are more than 120 years old, we were looking at what’s now the first known photo of Marie’s face.

With the generous permission of the Terra Foundation, this photo appears on the last page of my book The Secret of Marie. I’d like to thank Terra Collection Associate Shari Felty and my book cover designer Elizabeth MacFarland for producing a high-resolution image of this photo, which enhances the details Robinson clearly saw the day he photographed his beloved Marie.

It wasn’t my intention to solve the mystery of Marie when I started working on this book. I’m intrigued by the way she dissolved into the mist of time after Robinson’s last visit to Giverny in 1892, and I want her to enjoy her solace there. That said, I enjoy the thrill of a chase when I’m researching a story and have developed a kinship with Marie and Theodore as I’ve lived their love story.

The day I saw the details of Marie’s face (after the Terra had emailed me a digital image of Woman Standing by a Tree), I was sitting in “my” room at the old moulin, where this story began. I enhanced the image in iPhoto and zoomed in on her face. Another incredible moment, seeing Marie up close for the first time.

I looked out the window at the little bridge above the stream that turns the old mill’s water wheel, at the spot where she had posed for Robinson in his painting La Débâcle, which graces the cover of The Secret of Marie.

It was the end of an 11-year journey for me — and just the beginning of a wonderful opportunity to share the story of an artist from Vermont and his Parisian model who left an indelible mark, tinged with mystery, on the history of American Impressionism.

I hope you enjoy the tale.

Credits:

• photo of Theodore Robinson sketching in France, undated
• Theodore Robinson, Lady in Red, 1885, private collection
• Theodore Robinson, photo study for The Layette, 1892, Baudy-Perdrix Family Collection
• Theodore Robinson, variation of La Vachère (The Milkmaid), c. 1888
• Theodore Robinson, La Débâcle, 1892, The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, California

An art-history mystery set in Monet’s Giverny, The Secret of Marie weaves a modern-day love story with the romantic tale of American Impressionist painter Theodore Robinson and his favorite model — a woman known only as Marie, who has perplexed art historians for more than a century.

Available on Amazon.

As a blizzard buries the eastern U.S. today, I think back to a gorgeous spring day in 1983 when I went to work in Manhattan, wearing a silk dress, a short wool jacket and a lovely pair of heels. It was April, after all.

I worked at People magazine in midtown Manhattan then. Around 3 that afternoon, colleagues suddenly were heading home. “You’d better get going,” they’d say as they passed by my office. They knew I lived in New Jersey. “There’s a big snow storm coming.” I thought they were joking at first. Snow in April?

It was a Friday. I stayed until about 5 and finished my work. Snow was blowing as I trudged to the Port Authority Terminal, a 10-minute walk from the office. I was the last one to get on the last bus leaving the station that evening. Lucky me, I thought.

The bus got midway through the Lincoln Tunnel when New Jersey state troopers closed the turnpike at the other end. It was buried by more than a foot of drifting snow in a full-blown whiteout.

There was standing room only on that bus. I stood at the front, just behind the driver. The guy in the seat next to me pulled a flask out of his jacket. It wasn’t long before he was drunk and frisky. When his hand went up under my silk dress, I swatted him with my purse. When he did it again minutes later, I told the driver, who grabbed him by the collar and threw him off the bus. I watched through the bus windshield as they duked it out in the tunnel. The driver prevailed. Minutes later, a patrol car from Manhattan showed up and hauled the frisky drunk off to jail.

How fair is that, I thought. He’s going to get a hot meal and a bed tonight.

I eyed the empty seat next to me.

The guy standing behind me was eyeing it, too. I laughed when he said, “It’s yours, lady. You’ll do anything to get a seat.”

I smiled at him as I sat down. “You got that right.”

That bus sat parked in the tunnel for five hours that night. It was after midnight when we got the all-clear to proceed. A plow had cut a thin swath through the snow on the turnpike. I felt like we were in a giant sleigh as we passed stranded motorists huddled at tables in rest-area diners.

Then a dark thought crossed my mind: What happens when I get to my stop? I had parked my car on a residential street, two miles from where I lived, which was my normal routine.

It was 1 a.m. when we reached my stop in River Edge. My car was parked up a hill because the usual spots near the bus stop had been taken that morning. (It would be two days before I’d shovel out my car, with the help of a neighbor.)

I was alone, wearing heels, a silk dress and a useless blazer, two miles from home on the night of an April blizzard.

I started walking through the tracks of a snow plow. I could see its lights in the distance, a block away. It was backing up, about to drive away when suddenly it stopped. The driver had seen me. He spun the plow around and came for me.

“My god,” he said as he helped me into the cab. “Where do you live?”

“New Milford.”

“Don’t you worry, honey. I’ll take you home.”

He drove me as close to my front door as he could get. The entrance to my apartment was accessible through a courtyard that was mounded with fresh snow.

I thanked the driver. An earth angel, he was. “Will you be all right?” He looked worried.

I assured him I’d be fine. I wasn’t so sure when I rounded the corner where the snow was thigh high.

It took me a half hour to get to my door. By the time I got inside, my dress, slip and hose were frozen. There were clumps of ice beneath the waist of my dress.

I collapsed in a shivering, snowy heap on my living room floor. I made a solemn vow that night and said it loud: I AM MOVING TO CALIFORNIA!

And that’s exactly what I did.